Sunday, April 20, 2008
By BEN RAINES
Staff Reporter
Chocolate-colored wings flapping in unison as they ghost through the surf, a dozen cownose rays slip along Sand Island as the sun comes up.
The rays are hunting, flying just over the seafloor and watching intently as the beating of their powerful wings stirs the sand and uncovers bottom dwelling creatures.
Any sign of a clam or oyster, even a crab scuttling for safety, and one of the rays will peel off from the group and pounce, a pair of giant "teeth" inside its big suction cup of a mouth crunching oysters and crabs as easily as a person crunches a cracker.
Scientists know little about the large rays, and that has them worried, especially as the population in Mobile Bay and the Mississippi Sound appears to be increasing.
Along the Eastern Seaboard, the rays are blamed for wiping out North Carolina's century old commercial scallop harvest, a feat that was accomplished in just a few short years. In Chesapeake Bay, some believe cownose are one of the primary culprits behind massive, decades-long declines in the harvest of blue crabs and oysters.
Click here for the full article from the Mobile Press-Register.
